Friday, September 07, 2007

Getting Osama

There will no doubt be lots of analysis of the new Osama video over the next several days. If the reports are accurate, concerning what is said in that video, there is really only one message that matters: According to Osama, we must convert to Islam or die.

This writer knows of no one, liberal or conservative (except for the late Jerry Falwell) who thinks there has ever been any justification for Islamist terrorism. Yet conservatives have succeeded in portraying liberals, and the Democrats in particular, as sympathizers, enablers, or appeasers. And they have been able to do so because, when it comes to calling a spade a spade, the Democrats are cowards. By contrast, the conservatives are not afraid to shout from the rooftops that the Islamo-fascists want us dead. The problem with hearing it from our conservatives is that the policies they advocate in response are idiotic, and would lead to World War III faster than you can say "rapture".

Meanwhile, the Democrats, who by and large have better ideas about how to deal with extremism, seem pathologically unable to use the word "terrorist" in public speech. They've got their undies in a knot, trying to be politically correct and not offend mainstream Muslims. They defend airport screening protocols that treat grandmothers from North Dakota the same as young males with beards and Arabic names. In the process, they look and sound, well, weak and stupid.

Let's have a history lesson: Islam arose latest of the world's major religions; driven by a creed that called for forcible conversion, it became the most populous of those religions in very short order. It stormed out of the desert and, in a few hundred years, completely took over North Africa and even part of Europe. Contrary to the attempts by most Democrats and even George "Islam is a religion of peace" Bush to whitewash it, the fact is that the Koran repeatedly calls for the conversion of infidels, by sword if necessary, and its adherents have been very efficient at it. "But," you say, "today those kinds of extremists are just a lunatic fringe!" Really?

An estimated 200 million "mainstream" Muslims live in communities that practice female genital mutilation. A dozen Muslim countries operate Sharia courts, where they condemn children to death by stoning for "moral" offenses such as dating across clan lines. Religious minorities are no longer safe in Muslim countries, as they once were. Madrassas across Asia, the Middle East and North Africa are teaching undiluted hate and instilling in children a thirst for martyrdom. Sudan lurches from genocide to genocide, with Christians and Muslims alike butchered or starved to death by the Muslim government. At some point, one has to wake up and acknowledge that the values system that permits these realities is intolerable to human society.

If pointing this out is cultural imperialism, then so be it. Conservatives, usually quick to defend oppression under the guise of "letting people be" (think apartheid, south American death squads) have, to their credit, been crystal clear about the threat of radical Islam, even if they have to hold their noses while defending womens' rights. Meanwhile, progressives, so willing to protest China's crimes in Tibet, can't bring themselves to look the Muslim world in the eye and demand an accounting for its vastly greater and deeply endemic barbarism.

The only way the world's Islamic "mainstream" can earn the trust of the rest of us is to reject the use of force, and to repudiate Bin Laden and his ilk. Refusing to shelter and aid terrorists would be a great start. The conservatives in this country are not bothering to ask for that, because they are too busy with their own calls for blood and vengeance--they frankly love the idea of Holy War, and if you don't believe that, listen to Sean Hannity and Matt Drudge on the radio, if you can stand it. No, only the liberals and the Democrats any longer have the intellectual or moral standing to call for the Muslim world to stand down and embrace moderation. But to issue that call, they are going to have to get over their own reticence about Islam's brutal history. As long as they cower in the margins, they will deservedly be painted as appeasers. And, with the conservatives defining the debate, we slide closer to the abyss.

New Osama video seems yet another forgery. Everyone needs Osama alive:terrorists as symbolic leader and the US Administration - to avoidscaling down the war on terror.Obadiah Shoher rightly notes (http://www.samsonblinded.org/news/osama-commemorates-911-1114 ) thatnew Osama talks like a leftist university professor. I like Shoher'sanalysis. No way a terrorist leader like Osama would use a speechwriter. Osama is famousfor his rhetoric.Also, in the tape Osama both threatens America with attack (by"proving" Americans polytheists) and offers (yet another time)long-term coaching in Islam.But his dyed beard makes me cautious. Islam's mujahedeen dye theirbeards before battle.